Driving last year’s Mercedes W02, Schumacher set a best time of 1’18.561, more than a second quicker than Kimi Raikkonen’s fastest lap yesterday.

Raikkonen completed his second full day of testing for Lotus, he and Schumacher sharing a track for the first time since Schumacher first retired at the end of 2006.

He had a minor off in the morning, skidding into a gravel trap in the E20. But he continued his programme, running a longer stint in the afternoon and ending the day fourth having logged well over 100 laps.

Mark Webber also beat Raikkonen’s time with a 1’19.184 at the wheel of Red Bull’s RB8, which was quickest of the 2012 cars.

Daniel Ricciardo snuck inside Raikkonen’s best time from Tuesday, setting a 1’19.587 in the Toro Rosso STR7. Jean-Eric Vergne will have his first run in the car tomorrow.

The Ferrari F2012 completed almost 100 laps in Felipe Massa’s hands. He was seventh-fastest ahead of Jenson Button in the McLaren.

Among the new faces was Jules Bianchi, who had his first run at the wheel of the Force India in the morning, before handing it back to Paul di Resta.

I wouldn’t worry, they normally do less laps than most other teams. You know how they are with their analysis, part of the reason why they have such a dour image with non fans. The first test especially is about gathering data rather than outright pace. Kimi (and Schuey to an extent) will have had a point to prove I suspect which might have attributed to their “glory runs”. No point in the others showing their hand just yet.

If you look at the times, its hard to judge anyithing, especially at McLaren. Why would they wanna show their true potential till the first GP? But if they want to show it, then they would show it with Hamilton. Lewis is faster than Button in one lap. I think Jenson put some milage under the car, and tested different fuel loads, tried to understand the tyres (something like testing for race). Tomorrow Lewis will contuine the work, but I think he will test for “qualy”.

this may be a completly invalid point, but I think its better to have your consistent driver check the list for reliability, and your fast driver for performance.

Their opponents ware very consistent indeed incl FI, Red Bull, Lotus even Caterham and they could menage to be fast as well. I think Macs have a problem here it looks pretty similar to last years. I just hope they are not going to play catchup again :(

Yesterday, Jenson said that they weren’t doing any setup work just yet, & that they were focusing more on understanding the tires & getting mileage on the car. It doesn’t seem as if McLaren have been going for outright pace yet: that’s how they usually test anyway, so it really isn’t a surprise. Almost every year we get the “McLaren looks slow” or “they’ve built another dog” comments after the first test . & God forbid them bring out the flow-viz… the anti-McLaren crown will erupt with glee! LOL! But I think they’ll be fine… especially after hearing Button’s assessment yesterday. If it’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s not to read too much into test lap times, especially with McLaren.

At this point in time, the 2011 cars will be quicker because of the change in engine regs, I would think. But by the end of the season I daresay the teams will have developed other areas of the car to get that time back.

Autosport, maybe falsely, claimed they were running the EBD so they could get a direct comparison to last years tyres without an unknown in car spec.
Either way until they run the new car it means even less than the others testing times.

I believe Mercedes are running the blown diffuser. The whole point of running the 2011 car this week is to get tyre data, so it would be pointless for them to modify the 2011 car significantly by changing the diffuser.

There is nothing to take from Schumi’s time. The others ain’t behind him because they can’t go faster. Simply Schumi is driving a last year car so he doesn’t care if he pushes a little since they have nothing to hide with that car.
Actually they mind want to push a little just to see how the tyres behave.

This is just the 2nd day of testing, and if we were to judge championship favourites during pre season testing then Renault, Williams and Ferrari would have been fighting for the championship, and Mclaren would have been the worst of established teams in 2011.

The last test of the pre-season will give us a rough estimate of the pecking order

We can look at the times on longer runs as well. I remember back to this time last year and even with Williams doing ultra lightweight fast laps it was noted by trackside observers that Red Bull were very quick over a longer stint of 10+ laps. Once we start getting that info filtered back we’ll be able to make calls on who is and is not fast.

But on the other hand if I ran a team I would like to see outright pace at some stage during testing – it is easier to work on reliability of a really fast car than it is to extract more speed from a slow but reliable car in order to be at the front. Look at Red Bull in 2009-2011. They started out with reliability issues but had a fast car to work with. Multiple wins and both championships back to back ensue, and they now have a reliable and very fast package. Sauber have always been reliable but fast???

Most teams who are in need of money and sponsorship will run lower fuel, faster laps to try make there care look faster to the people with the money. A few years back Sauber were the fastest and they didn’t come anywhere near that pace during that season. As @Mike said, Qualifying in Melbourne is the first indication to how fast cars are. I’d even go as far to say maybe a few races into the season we will see how fast exactly these cars are as more and more improvements are made.

As reported on the BBC the lap times mean nothing, and look who topped the first four days of testing last year,

So how much does a fastest time over one of these four days mean then? Well if we cast our minds back 12 months, the fastest man on day one of testing at Jerez was Felipe Massa. The next day it was Michael Schumacher, followed by Nick Heidfeld and Rubens Barrichello on days three and four. Universally underwhelming seasons followed with two of those drivers no longer in F1 and the other two out-performed by their team-mates during 2011. So keep that pinch of salt handy, eh?

@toothpickbandit if I was you I would completely ignore anything Andrew Benson says that isn’t based on absolute fact going by his latest article on the BBC. He began with the title “Webber fastest on day two of testing” … erm, really? He then goes on to say this :

McLaren and Ferrari had another low-key day.
Both teams emphasised they were concentrating on learning about their new cars rather than setting quick times.
However, the same will also apply to Red Bull, yet Webber was quickly down to a pace faster than Raikkonen had managed on Tuesday and well clear of Felipe Massa in the Ferrari and Jenson Button in the McLaren.

This seems to me to attempt to imply that they were doing the same thing! Anyone involved in F1 should know how different programs can be and generally are. Is he suggesting RB are over 1.5 seconds quicker than Mclaren? If not, then he shouldn’t be making any comparison.

He also goes on to say Massa admitted Ferrari are stuggling to understand their car, followed by the quote, that says nothing of the sort.

Finally there is this:

Michael Schumacher’s fastest lap in a 2011 Mercedes underlines the general irrelevance of headline lap times in testing, but a couple of things of apparent importance have emerged. The first is the ease and regularity with which Mark Webber was able to lap in the 1m19s bracket in the new Red Bull. The second is that Ferrari seem to be struggling a little.

Well, way to contradict yourself Andrew! Says drawing conclusions from testing times is useless, then draws conclusions. Also showing clear bias to RB, completely ignoring STR’s ability to easily put in 1.19s.

yeah ive lost a lot of respect for him as an f1 journalist this preseason! i think his mandate was to try and get people excited aboit the tests and give them meaning, but hes gone completely the wrong way about it.

Obviously we can’t read too much into these timings. There was one thing noticable though; both Redbull and Mclaren had good long-run pace while Ferrari didn’t. Redbull had two types of long-runs it seems. Once they did 1.22’s for serveral laps, and once they did 1.24’s for serveral laps. Mclaren was also into the 1.24’s, so that could mean they were both testing with full fueltanks. But than again, we have no clue.

Red Bull looks the best, planted in every corner, Stable under braking, Good mid-corner speed/stability, Earlier on the throttle than anyone else & opening DRS earlier than anyone else.

McLaren looks about next best although it seems a bit twitchey at times under braking & doesnt seem to have the turn in grip. Has the highest top speed again in speed traps with Force India not far behind.

Force India looks real good, car looks really stable & easy to drive.

Ferrari are hard to judge, Car didn’t look anything special but Massa never really seemed to be really pushing it. He threw it over the kurbs real hard a few times as if he was going for it but then quickly backed off to not set a representative lap time.

Lotus seems OK, Car seems good through the bends.

Caterham seems well balanced although Heikki was really having to wait to get back on the throttle & seemed hesitant to open DRS untill well onto the straght.

Sauber was all over the place in faster turns, looked a real handfull.

I think the clues you always get in pre-season testing are little to do with the lap times; it’s the driver and team quotes. When they talk about ‘learning’ or ‘understanding’ that can give a hint that the car isn’t immediately where they want it to be.

Usually, if the car’s good, they will (carefully) say as much.

Massa is a good example, although I suspect he’s technically heavily reliant on his engineer’s output, so expect more hair loss for Rob Smedley before melbourne.

Alonso will be the acid test at Jerez. He’s guarded at best, downright critical if he doesn’t think the car’s up to it.